


Not As Planned

by tainry



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, Tentacle Sex, fandom-atypical sticky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:18:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jazz comes to Earth in a “borrowed” spaceship. Things go slagwise. Hilarity ensues! Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not As Planned

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a gen fic! Honest and truly it did! …Then smut happened. ^^; Also, not very spooky. u_u;
> 
> For the 2012 Spook Me round, but I didn't finish it until a year later. OOPS. u.u;;;

“Optimus, I’m picking up a signal.” Ratchet fiddled with the sensor array’s controls. The whole thing was slow and the interface was sludgy, but it was the best he’d been able to cobble together, given the materials available. The signal was embedded in the “noise” of Earth’s magnetic field in a way Ratchet hadn’t seen in quite a while. The technique itself, the signature, as it were, told him who this was. 

Watching the screen over his shoulder, Optimus smiled. “Jazz.”

“Jazz?” Smokescreen said, optics brightening. “ _The_ Jazz?” Arcee shushed him, but he continued to bounce on his pedes, much to Jack’s amusement. Smokey was such a fanboy.

Ratchet set up a reply code, lifted an eyebrow to indicate he was ready to transmit. 

“Six Lasers Over Iacon,” Optimus said, garnering looks from not only the three young humans but the younger Autobots as well. “Hexad, 47, Zeta-63225.8.”

“Haha, loud and clear, Boss-bot,” came the reply. “In front of the hot arsenic stick vendor?”

“Mountain, speculative, bismuth crystals, wind in the Sonic Canyons,” Optimus said, while even Ratchet looked flummoxed. “We will ground bridge you in.”

“Copy that.”

“Jazz, what kind of ship is that?” Ratchet cut in. “You’re reading pretty small – I might be able to bridge you in without landing.”

“What?” Bulkhead protested. “Wait a minute, _again_ that’s it? He gets a free pass to the base?” Smokescreen had been bad enough, but this was sight unseen. Wheeljack had been made to land on the other side of the planet!

“Jazz has known Optimus longer than I have,” Ratchet said. He was smiling, fond maybe, Jack thought, but his tone was a little sad. “They know each other very well.”

“Okay,” Miko said. “Verging on WTMI here.”

Jack blinked. “What? Where is _your_ mind?”

“Ha! Where’s _yours_?”

“I never thought I’d say this,” Arcee admitted, “but I’m with Miko.”

“La la la la la la!” Bulkhead said, making a show of covering his audials. “Can’t hear you!”

“Ahem,” Ratchet growled. “The point is, only Jazz and Optimus know the code they were using just now.”

“You got company down there, Docbot?” Jazz asked over the still-open channel.

“Yes, yes, introductions later,” Ratchet snapped. “Ship?”

“Slag if I know, Ratch. I…borrowed it from a shipyard on Vellere.”

“You…” Ratchet waved the rest of his sentence away. “I don’t want to know.”

“Uh huh. Unless ground bridges have gotten a lot smaller lately I think we’re good. You got me pinpointed yet?”

“Yes. Or I would have if you’d quit hopping around. Arcee?”

Frowning, Arcee moved to the ground bridge control and pulled the levers down. The base lit with coruscating green, and a moment later a small, sleek, jet-black craft slid into the main bay on silent repulsors. 

Bulkhead chuckled. “Trust Jazz to st-, uh, I mean, borrow a ship with style.”

The little ship settled, rather ostentatiously, Jack thought, directly on the Autobot sigil set into the floor, and after a moment parts of the side unfolded to reveal an elegant, two-seater interior and a lean, white-and-black mech sporting the Autobot Elite Guard sigil. 

“Ratchet! That rusty old spark still kicking over? Good to see ya!”

“Where’s Prowl?” Ratchet grumbled, peering inside the small vessel as though the tactician might somehow be hidden there.

“I left him…” Jazz began.

“About time!” Ratchet said.

“…With Ultra Magnus and Tyrest,” Jazz finished, smirking. His grin broadened at the expressions on the humans’ and Smokescreen’s faces. “Prowl and me, we don’t like each other, but we make a real effective team.”

Jack nodded to himself. Even in his brief working experience, he’d found out there were some people you liked personally, but were hard to _work_ with. It made sense that the opposite could be true, too. 

“That I’ll give you,” Ratchet was saying. “A frighteningly effective team. If only Prowl didn’t have a torsion rod up his—”

“Prowl’s social algorithms may be…minimal,” Prime cut in hastily. “But his tactical ability has long been an important asset.”

Diplomaticus Prime, Jack thought. 

“A stolen spaceship,” Miko crooned. “I am _in_ a stolen _spaceship_! How cool is that!”

How, Jack wondered (idly at this point since anything else was futile), did she get from the catwalk to inside the little ship without anyone seeing her? Did she open up a wormhole into Miko-space or something? At least she wasn’t jumping around pushing buttons. Just sort of standing on a seat, vibrating. 

“Is it supposed to be doing that?” Miko asked, staring wide-eyed at the, for want of a better term, dashboard. 

Jazz reached for Miko, Optimus reached for Jazz, and with a flash of multicolored, esoteric radiation all three were gone.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

The jungle was alive with sound. Windless, rain-filled air carried the cries of living things all around them through the heavy, dripping foliage; chirps and scrapes of insects, trills and warbles of what Miko assumed were birds, and many, many less-identifiable bellows and roars. 

“Whoa!” Miko gasped, reeling. “Optimus, I don’t think we’re in Nevada any more!”

Jazz had transformed one hand to a compact, angular, but somehow ugly little pistol. “Where are we?”

Miko knocked on Optimus’ ankle and pointed. “I think the question might be _when_ are we?” 

They were on enough of a hilltop that through a break in the trees they could see another sort of forest swaying gently – a forest of long, graceful necks, dipping their heads now and then to nibble the tops of the surrounding trees.

“Jurassic Park!” Miko exulted. She and Jack and Raf had just watched the trilogy last weekend.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

“AaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGHHH!!!

Jack had never heard Ratchet make that sound before. It rose and rose in volume and resonance until it was almost…not a scream, not a shout exactly… almost a… a _roar_. It was kind of awesome. Except for the whole Miko, Prime and new guy disappearing thing. That was bad. 

“No!” Ratchet was definitely shouting now. “No, no, no, no, no! This can NOT be… What kind of…? Who built…? Slagging…” From there on it devolved into grumbles Jack wasn’t certain were even in English any more. 

“Uh, Ratch?” Bulkhead started, rather timidly.

“What just ha—” Arcee continued, not quite as timidly.

“DON’T TALK TO ME!” Ratchet yelled, shoulders-deep in the innards of the little ship’s engines. “I’M THINKING!”

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

“Dinosaurs are cool, but where’s our ride?” Miko, lacking boulders, had climbed a nearby tree that appeared close enough to some kind of pine as made no difference. Its reddish sap smelled piney enough. She was never going to get that out of her leggings. At least the dense needles sheltered her from some of the rain. Kind of.

Jazz had watched this performance with half an optic, scanning their surroundings but interested in her, too. An arboreal species of some sort, he thought. Though given the proportions of arms and legs, one that no longer spent all of its time in trees. “Not picking up any trace of the ship,” he said. “On short or long-range. In fact I’m not reading any metal except us for about seven klicks all around. But…”

“Yes,” Optimus agreed, his tone more intrigued than alarmed. “There is a great deal of metal beyond that radius.” He looked at Miko. “And some of it is moving.” His hands remained hands and not the big guns or swords, but he nodded at Jazz. Jazz’s pistol remained out and charged. 

“Back in half a megacycle,” Jazz said, saluting. He disappeared into the brush with a swiftness and silence that surprised Miko. 

“Give me your hand,” Optimus said. Feeling very much a princess, Miko extended her arm. Upon her wrist Optimus curled a wide, silvery metal band, adorned with a single blue gem the size and shape of a longan cut in half. Not her usual style, but she wasn’t about to turn it down. Light glimmered in the depths of the jewel.

“Ooo! Is this a tracking device?”

“Yes,” Optimus said. “I would prefer that you remain close to me.”

“Buuuut,” Miko sighed, “you know how I am.”

They waited. Optimus was probably taking all kinds of tricorder readings or whatever, Miko knew, and the former archivist was probably happy to keep doing that for hours. Miko, meanwhile, flipped out her phone and started taking snaps. Pics or it didn’t happen! The boys were going to be so jealous! After several minutes of this, however, Miko had to concede that her phone wasn’t meant to be out in the rain. This was a bummer, but she had games on her phone, so at least there was something to do while waiting for the next epic robot smackdown. She huddled over the tiny screen, jabbing buttons with her thumbs. At least it was a warm rain. Like that field trip she’d taken to Kyushu when she was twelve.

“Found something,” came Jazz’s voice clear over Optimus’ comms. “You’ll wanna see this yourselves.”

“On our way,” Optimus replied, extending a hand to Miko. She hopped in and then settled on his shoulder, lying down and holding on tight to his truck mode’s roof lights. Optimus’ running stride was a lot smoother than Bulkhead’s, she found, feeling a little disloyal for enjoying the gently swooping run through the jungle rather than having to hope she wasn’t going to hurl. 

They met Jazz at a stream-bank, near a short waterfall created by the enormous trunk of a long-fallen tree. 

“Wow,” Miko said, peering down. “Spiky!”

The greeny-grey creature in mid-stream wasn’t a Triceratops, Miko knew that much. Too many horns. Definitely a dinosaur, she just had no idea which one. It lifted its head, but Miko guessed the robots didn’t smell like anything important because the dino continued on its way downstream.

“Hard to tell,” Jazz said, gesturing around at what Miko had at first assumed were big angular boulders, “but, it don’t look like battle damage, exactly.” The shapes were decayed and moss-covered, but now Miko could see they were…tanks? Cannons? Old-fashioned stuff, maybe WWII, but she wouldn’t want to take a quiz on that. Big and blocky with obvious rivets, all rusty in streaks down their sides. Who used actual cannons any more, either? “More like,” Jazz continued, “this stuff’s been…chewed on.”

“Judging from the designs,” Optimus said, “I would guess these devices to be from a variety of cultures, or from different time periods.”

“None of it looks familiar to me,” Jazz said, smiling at his old friend.

“Some of it is of human design,” Optimus explained, returning the smile. 

“So where’s the moving stuff?” Miko asked, pleased with her vantage. Bulkhead was more massive, but Prime was way taller.”I don’t think any of these things have moved for ages.”

“Humid jungle environments such as this,” Optimus began – Miko tuned him out almost immediately. Jazz was wading downstream a short distance and was leaning forward, listening or scanning. Miko couldn’t hear anything over the teeming jungle noise and Prime’s lecture-mode drone. Until she could.

“Metallivores!” Jazz shouted, already running back upstream. Autobots were fearless and awesome and that totally was not a look of utter terror on Jazz’s face as he sprinted by them.

“Metalli _what_?” 

“Metal eaters,” Optimus translated as he ran after Jazz, cupping a hand over Miko.

“Like scraplets?”

“Bigger than scraplets!” Jazz yelled, already a dozen meters ahead. “Much bigger!”

The metallivores came crashing and whomping after them; roughly spherical bodies with no separate head, sprouting pincers and an awful lot of legs, rows of glowing eyes along each side, and enormous jag-toothed mouths battering and champing in anticipation. Miko could feel the furnace heat of their insides every time they opened their mouths. They _looked_ a little like scraplets, but not nearly as cute. 

Or, she decided, as they got a little closer, not cute at all! Couldn’t Prime and Jazz transform? They were faster in vehicle mode…but the trees were too close together, even leaning and meshing over the stream, and Miko suspected that cutting a path with lasers or swords or whatever would be slower than just running on foot and crashing through smaller bushes and stuff like they were already doing. 

“Think they’ll stop and eat the tanks?” she asked. 

“Unfortunately, metallivores, like scraplets, prefer living metal,” Optimus said, smoothly leaping a chasm. Ahead, Jazz had sped up, being smaller and faster, and was scouting for terrain that would help them and hinder their pursuers. Not much luck, though, with all those legs. Behind them, the metallivores leapt the chasm with equal ease. 

“There are only twelve of them,” Optimus called out to Jazz. “Unless you have acquired a flight mode, I am afraid we will have to—”

Only? Twelve?? Miko peeked through Optimus’ fingers. How could he _tell_? She was sure there must be at least sixty!

“Negative on the flight mode,” Jazz hollered back. “But we’re coming up to a nice little bottleneck!” They were running uphill now, steeper and steeper, though that didn’t seem to slow the Bots at all. Miko couldn’t make out much beyond the rushing green blur of trees to either side, but soon the trees seemed to thin slightly, and the Bots jumped small streams that were more waterfall than stream, and the wind of their speed seemed cooler. 

They reached a narrow vertical cleft in the mountainside, and Jazz immediately turned and began firing with his ugly pistol – missing Optimus by what Miko would have thought awfully slim margins if she hadn’t seen this kind of thing before. 

Without preamble, Optimus lifted her to near the top of a tree, and Miko clung to a branch like any self-respecting primate. He said nothing, but caught and held her gaze sternly, slamming his facemask shut. Miko didn’t really need telling. This was the kind of fight she’d rather not be underfoot for. She just didn’t want to be left out. She had to see what was going on, because that was truly the only way to stay safe.

Optimus added his firepower to Jazz’s. The metallivores swarmed into the cleft just as the rain let up, the downpour of water swiftly replaced with a downpour of energon and shrapnel. The metallivores readily turned upon their own wounded, and thus were picked off faster. Miko caught a couple of pics but the battle, like most she had witnessed, was over too quickly for her human reflexes to follow. Both robots continued to scan for more foes, weapons humming and ready, but no further creatures manifested. 

Jazz sagged against the mossy back wall of the cleft, venting hard, optics squeezed tightly shut behind his translucent visor. Was he actually trembling? Optimus retracted his big guns and stepped close, placing a hand on Jazz’s shoulder, worry clear on his expressive face. Miko had always thought Optimus had amazing eyebrows. 

“Ran into a nest of ‘em on Hrelev IV,” Jazz explained. “They…they got Swerve and Powerglide…and they almost got me.” He clasped Optimus’ hand. “Sorry, Bossbot. Didn’t mean to get skivvery on ya.” 

“Our next priority should be to find the ship,” Optimus said gently, squeezing Jazz’s shoulder. 

Miko watched them avidly. She was going to have to revise her shipping wall now. She’d pegged Optimus and Ratchet as the Old Married Couple. Not that a threesome was out of bounds, now that she thought about it. Her shipping wall wasn’t an actual wall, like Nepeta’s in _Homestuck_ , of course. That would have been too easy for others to find and tease her about. Her shipping “wall” was really a handful of pages hidden in the center of one of her sketchbooks, surrounded by rough crayon scribbles of cars and local landscapes that no one was interested in. She didn’t use anyone’s actual names either, just special private nicknames only she knew, spelled out in her rather hen-scratchy katakana. Genius!

Jazz nodded. “I’ll take perimeter again.”

“Then Miko and I shall head for higher ground.” Optimus held out a hand and Miko, smiling not to be left behind, climbed on. 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

“So, that flash of light…” Jack began, putting the important things together quickly.

“Yes,” Ratchet muttered, fingers flying over the green computer panels. Raf was down at the smaller, older controls with his laptop hooked up, trying to help, but this was proving to be not his forte. “The energy resembles that of a ground bridge; or more precisely a space bridge.”

“Then they could be in orbit?” Miko didn’t have a suit. Jack felt an uncomfortable lurch in his midsection and tried to ignore it. They didn’t know anything for certain yet. 

“We’ve searched the entire planet and airspace up to LEO,” Arcee said from an secondary panel. “We’re not picking up their signals and we can’t reach them on any bandwidth. If they’re not on Earth and they’re not above it…they could be anywhere.” Bulkhead and Bee were pacing around the walls of the main chamber, fidgeting and frustrated. Jack knew how they felt. 

“Maybe I’m gong about this backwards,” Ratchet said, mostly to himself. “If we can’t figure out _what_ , maybe we can figure out _why_ and work at it from that direction.”

That sounded backwards to Jack, but Ratchet was already moving, climbing back inside the little ship, staring at the controls for some time before leaning forward and pushing buttons. 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

It had rained on them again as they ascended, but Optimus strode and leapt and climbed on, unfazed. Probably didn’t even notice, Miko thought, huddling into as much of a ball as she could and still hold on. They hadn’t left the dinos behind, she noticed, even as the forest thinned more and more, and the ground became rocky and bare. These were the flying ones, though, mostly. And a few little guys who ran around on two legs, with long, long tails and neat little hands. Raf would have known what they were. None of the reptiles seemed to be too interested in Optimus, though, and that was fine with Miko. 

They reached the top after only a couple of hours. Her phone’s clock still worked, even if she wasn’t getting any signal, and the time it displayed didn’t seem to really have much to do with what time it was on this planet. 

“Volcano,” Miko said, peering down into a rugged, bowl-like crater. Like Mount Fuji back home.

From the crater rim they could see that they were on a large island, or a peninsula – the land extended to the west out to the horizon, but to the east was ocean lapping at the very feet of the mountain they were on, and to north and south curved sandy beaches. Tropical paradise, if it weren’t for the dinosaurs (just because they hadn’t seen any T. rexes yet didn’t mean there weren’t any) and metal-eating maniacs. 

Jazz joined them after a few moments, whistling at the view. “Still no sign of the ship,” he said. “There are more old wrecks down in the bay to the north, crawling with green scaly guys. And the metallivores we clocked down below weren’t the only ones.” He looked up at Prime. “We shouldn’t stay up here, it’s too exposed.”

Prime nodded, and began the descent, seaward this time, making for a stream off to the right. Miko would need fresh water, not salt, if they found themselves stuck in this place for much longer. 

They had no sooner slipped back under the cover of the treeline than metallivores attacked again, moving at first with surprising stealth. Jazz ran up a short ridge to their left and leaped over the ragged line of creatures, somersaulting and firing in midair, trying to draw them away from Prime and Miko. Optimus swung his blade into one, shielding Miko with his other hand, only to have another metallivore chomp down on his blade-arm, serrated teeth grinding and gnashing with a horrible screeching of metal on metal, thrown sparks reflecting in its mad optics. Jazz shot it and it fell away, leaving a few teeth behind in Optimus’ armor. 

Optimus set Miko down in some ferns growing on a branch of a huge, ancient tree, then jumped into the fighting with both blades. There were fewer metallivores this time, and it was over in a few minutes. But that few minutes had been long enough for Miko to climb down the tree, dodge a giant robot-creature trying to eat her friends, stumble over a rock and accidentally slide down a scree and ash slope for about two hundred feet. 

Her elbows were scraped and her bum sore, but she was otherwise fine. Getting her bearings, she first spotted the bright white of Jazz’s armor; finding Optimus by the red nearby, even masked as they were by the dense vegetation between. Grinning, she took a phone-photo, snapping a few more of the view down toward the ocean while she was at it. Turning back to watch the progress of the Bots as they came toward her, she noticed something odd. 

Darting across the bottom of the scree slope, slipping and stumbling now and then, she ignored Prime’s call for her to be careful and made for the shadowy thing she’d seen. A cave – moss-hung and almost perfectly circular at the entrance. A lava tube. The sun was westering, falling now behind the volcano from their perspective, but the late afternoon light was enough to illuminate the round walls of the cave for several yards. Glassy in some places, rough in others, the walls curved upwards to create the arched ceiling; layers of dirt and ash made for a reasonably flat floor. And it was big enough for Optimus and Jazz to fit in, too. She ran back to the entrance to wave them over, but Optimus was already there, and Jazz hopped down from above, landing neatly and activating his headlamps. The back of the tube had collapsed, ending the cave in fallen rock, but as Miko had thought, the remaining chamber was plenty large enough to shelter the robots. 

There were things to do before they could settle in for the swiftly-approaching night. Miko attended to her own personal matters while Optimus scanned the cave to make sure it was indeed stable and wouldn’t collapse on them without warning. Jazz disappeared for a while. Scouting again, Miko thought, until he returned, carrying a couple of fish and what looked like an old gas can with the top rusted off. It _was_ an old gas can, but it had been empty and long scoured clean by the elements, and Jazz had filled it with water from the stream nearby. 

“Doesn’t even taste like rust,” Miko pronounced with surprise and delight. Jazz had a driftwood fire going in no time, thanks to a low-power burst from his pistol, and Miko skewered the fish and set them to roast. Hopefully they weren’t poisonous. They looked just like the madai her mom used to buy at the market for special occasions, though, so Miko wasn’t too worried. 

Jazz fussed over Optimus’ arm while Miko ate, and afternoon turned to evening. 

“It is not as bad as it looks,” Optimus said.

Miko snorted. “We’ve heard that before.” Jazz gave her a surprised look, but grinned.

“You got that right. Now hold still and lemme look at that actuator. Getting those wires capped off won’t be a problem, but…” Jazz hrmmed and pulled Optimus’ forearm closer, turning it toward the firelight.

“The actuator repair can wait,” Optimus said, allowing the examination. He could not move the smallest finger on that hand, but he had four others and those were operating properly. 

Jazz pulled a small field repair kit from a cache on his hip and capped off or spliced the sparking wires. The rents in Prime’s armor and the damaged inner structures would indeed have to wait until they could – somehow – get back to the old Docbot. 

“So are you like Ratchet’s apprentice or something?” Miko asked, coming into the cave with an armload of fern fronds and broader leaves. By the look of the pile already near the fire this wasn’t her first trip. How had she gotten out without them noticing?

“Nah,” Jazz said, resolving to track the little mammal a lot more closely. 

“Jazz,” Optimus began, his optics gleaming a little at Jazz’s expression, “like most field agents who must operate for extended periods alone, has basic training in repair.”

“Ah. Gotcha.” Miko dumped her fronds in the pile and headed back out for more. She paused suddenly at the entrance. Optimus and Jazz joined her there. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas,” she said, pointing.

Three moons had risen, shining crescents in an elongated triangle; two small, one quite large. 

“So we haven’t travelled in time,” Jazz said. “I guess that’s good news?”

“Perhaps.” Humans did not have definite knowledge pertaining to whether or not there had always only been one moon around their planet. Their earliest cave paintings only dated to a few tens of thousands of years ago. But the rusting tanks and ships made no sense either. Perhaps it was too soon to judge whether their travel involved the dimension of time or not. There was a soft click. He looked down. Miko was taking pictures, smiling in wonder and glee. 

Snaps acquired, she flipped her phone closed and bounced down into the jungle again to collect more nesting materials. 

“Want some help with that?” Jazz asked, following. With Jazz’s greater carrying capacity, Miko soon had a green, fragrant bed big enough for six or seven humans. It was scrunchy and a little weird, but softer than the bare sand would be, and even as full night came on – and with it stronger ocean breezes – it wasn’t that cold out. 

Jazz watched the little human as she proceeded to settle into a sort of recharge mode. Sleep, most organics called it, whose brains required similar periods of somnolence or alterations in consciousness. She was deeply asleep soon, and based on similar species, was likely to remain that way for some time. 

He looked at Optimus, both of their fields flaring with everything they hadn’t had time or privacy to express yet. Optimus glanced at Miko’s slumbering form, concern warring with his desire. It had been so long…too long. They needed to rejoin. Re-integrate. Self-repair did all it could, Ratchet did more, but there were some things only the most intimate of connections could mend. 

Scooting to the back of the cave, well away from the sleeping human and the fire, Jazz leaned back on his elbows, drawing his legs up comfortably and spreading his knees wide. The panel at his groin was already hot in anticipation, hot under Optimus’ equally needy gaze; but Optimus hesitated, remaining at his guard position between the fire and the cave’s entrance. If the entry was large enough for them, it was large enough to admit most of the saurian species of carnivores that inhabited this planet, or at least this area of the planet. Jazz nodded, understanding. He opened a cache in one thigh and tossed Optimus a small grenade-like object. Optimus smiled and set the two hemispherical halves in crevices of the rock on either side of the threshold and activated the device. The resultant shield was invisible to most frequencies of vision encountered on worlds around main sequence suns, but would withstand the attacks of even desperately hungry metallivores. 

Undistracted from his aims, Jazz rolled his hips, barely able to keep his panel closed. Optimus approached him slowly, lingering over the sight. A feast. 

“Optimus,” Jazz moaned, letting his head fall back, dimming his optics. “Orion…I need you…” Arching his back, he opened his panel wide, the three petals of it withdrawing into his pelvic assembly with a fevered hiss. Behind writhed the constrained, seething bulges of his cheiridia. With a deep clenching and a thrust of his hips skyward, he forced them out, all six flinging themselves erect, dripping with lubricants and the precursors of the far more precious fluids they would emit once properly stimulated. Optimus made a low sound and Jazz clawed at the stone beneath him, aching to complete their union. “Please…”

Optimus knelt slowly beside him, watching him intently in that serene way he had, the imperturbable, untouchable way he had acquired with the Matrix. For this he would be allowed the full range of emotion and sensation, but he would have to be roused to it, driven to it. Jazz, if he was honest, enjoyed this very much. Under normal circumstances. But it had been too long. He just wanted, he just needed. They both did. 

That big, gentle hand moved toward him, brushing his right knee. Jazz let his cheiridia surge toward it, coiling and sliding against each other, rubbing slick, sensitive mesh against mesh, colors and lights rippling from bases to tips and back, enticing; begging for attention, for petting, to be intertwined with their mates. Optimus stroked Jazz’s thigh, moving closer to the center of need with each elliptical orbit of blunt, warm fingertips. 

Jazz clenched his torso in an urgent wave, in imitation of the undulations of his cheiridia; watching Optimus’ face, parsing his fields. He reached for his Prime’s hand, stroking the back, the sides of the fingers. He moved his feet, making a space for Optimus between them. Optimus shifted, kneeling in the offered place, smiling gently, benevolently, indeed lovingly, but not yet with the heat Jazz knew he needed.

Optimus moved his hand from Jazz’s thigh to cup the swollen base of the cluster, where the colors shaded to velvety dark, shadowy and deep. Jazz would have shouted then but he had learned a trick or two in Spec Ops and knew how to turn off his vocal system entirely. His hips made small, ragged circles, but, catching a glimpse of the Prime, whose spread knees forced Jazz’s legs wider, saw that the Prime’s panels were unsealed, standing out a centimeter or so from the surrounding structures, but closed. Heat poured from the edges in infrared, but slag if the fragging Matrix wasn’t still clamped down on him. Jazz pumped more energon into his cheiridia, lengthening and thickening them, until the tapering forked fingerlets at their tips popped free, separating from each other with little wet smicks, grasping at the heavy, humid air. He cycled the colors faster, ribbons and spirals of teal and sapphire and crimson, blending and flashing beneath the patterns of bright blue sensor dots, which grew more numerous and closer together near the tips. Optimus made a small, low sound, almost too soft to be heard, but at last his panels opened.

Ruby red, sapphire blue, like the corundum whose colors they mimicked, the coiled hexad of Optimus’ cheiridia lay revealed, brilliant and gleaming. Gems indeed, and more precious than gems to Jazz. Easing onto his elbows and knees, Optimus trailed a steady and precise line of kisses up Jazz’s frame, settling his body over Jazz’s, mouths at last together, chests proximate, though this meant their groins remained over a meter apart. Jazz squirmed a little in frustration, but kissing…kissing was good, too. And it had been such a long time.

Coaxing, Jazz reminded himself. He was seducing the Matrix as much as Optimus. If that slagging artifact wanted slow and sensuous, Jazz was going to have to give it. He rocked his hips, stroking Prime’s abdomen with his cheiridia, the fingerlets exploring hungrily, pressing into transformation seams, licking charge across and through heavy armor. 

Jazz lashed his glossa into Prime’s mouth as though completing a circuit. _Not letting him go,_ Jazz directed the thought at the Matrix. _He’s mine; he was mine before you took him, before you took his self from him._ Optimus opened his mouth, his own glossa inert. His body moved over Jazz placidly, obedient to Jazz’s caresses. Jazz risked reinitializing his vocal system. “Please,” he begged. “Please…I know you’re still in there…I need you, we need each other, slag it, it’s been too long already!” He hooked his heels around Optimus’ hips and dragged their groins together, his cheiridia plunging at Optimus’ in a frenzy, lubricant and chemical precursors slicking their thighs.

Optimus struggled for a moment, then relaxed; glossa twining with Jazz’s, hands roaming Jazz’s body with less deliberation, more heat. He thrust against Jazz and his cheiridia burst free, engorged and pulsing, almost black with suppressed color, knotting with Jazz’s immediately into a twelve-stranded plait. Not the most elegant or expert of patterns, but their need was too urgent for control. Their fingerlets grasped each other hard, microscopic pores opening as the vital exchange began.

Jazz‘s legs clamped convulsively around Optimus’ waist. He could feel Optimus’ thighs beneath his back as Optimus pulled him into his lap, bent over him to keep their mouths in contact; enclosing him. The plait of cheiridia between them hardened, immobile; even their hands merely twitched on each other’s plating, their fingers making only small, uncoordinated movements, their bodies stilled as the massive electrochemical bonding continued. 

Prime’s spark began it, the conduits between spark and pelvic array opening flush and hot, the oscillation – precarious and necessary – sending the first waves of light and power through them. Relief crashed through every atom of Jazz’s body, sweet as Completion. His own spark echoed back, eager, spinning faster to match wave with wave, twin pulsars singing across the dark. 

The pulses grew stronger and more rapid. Each outward-rushing wave of light and energy carried information as well; who they were, what they had learned while apart, remembering who they had been together, what they wanted now. Echoed and re-echoed, the patterns mixing and reacting, melding, mending the gaps that had grown in their sparks since the last time they had done this. They opened themselves fully, needing this in a primal, physical way, reaffirming their bond, sending renewed energy throughout their bodies, and repairing tiny, subtle program errors that ordinary diagnostics might not catch. They were each other’s pristine backup, whole and uncluttered, and returning to clean presets was like being reforged. 

Their plaited cheiridia glowed hot amid their knots, pores open and locked together, from each to the other. As the stream of spark pulses quickened, so did the stream of microcrystalline fluid, seething through their energon lines in boiling surges, invigorating subsystems long dormant, full of data-rich energy filtered and collimated by the conduits from spark to cheiridia, added to in irreproducible ways by strange processes in the cheiridia themselves. 

Struggling to thrust but delightfully pinned, Jazz reached down and stroked the plait, sensation oscillating wildly as his fingertips brushed his own and then Prime’s and then his own across the complex knots; lightly at first, then more and more firmly, his hand joined by one of Prime’s. Optimus rumbled down at the bottom of his range, sound more felt than heard even for Jazz, volcanic warning just before their sparks _blazed_ in a peal of thunderous light, and Jazz arched, mouth open wide on a soundless cry; Optimus curled around him, dentae bared, hand denting Jazz’s backplate, liquid energy surging and turbulent between them. Every last needed crystal snapped into place, every ion of stored power rang full, and for one high, clear nanosecond everything shut down. 

Immediate boot up, full and flushed, colors bright, optics clean to beyond the horizon, sparks in perfect synchrony despite dissimilar size, their armor not even hot because every joule was in its proper place. Twined together they were beautiful, and perfectly themselves.

Jazz shook, emotionally wrought, but physically at peace for the first time in a long time. He stifled sobs, clinging to the large frame beside him. It had been so long, almost too long, almost enough to break their bond – the physical need if not the attenuated ties of ancient friendship. Through the physical tie Jazz could feel Optimus’ moil of distress and relief as well, over and under the enforced calm the Matrix required. The Matrix was being kind, allowing them this afterglow, perhaps understanding in its implacable way that to deny Optimus this release would over time endanger his sanity. 

Ratchet had done what he could, Jazz could feel now, over the long years. But Ratchet had done this through medical necessity as well as friendship, and as good and loving as that was, it wasn’t what Jazz could do, not what Jazz or Optimus ultimately needed. 

As night turned above them, their cheiridia slowly softened, loosening their intricate knots. Jazz didn’t want them to, didn’t want to let go, not yet. Maybe not for a full solar cycle. Or nine. But the young little human would wake in a few megacycles, and Optimus had implied that she would find their joining disturbing in some way. 

Odd, but organics were weird. Jazz generally liked them, though. Their brief lifespans often gave them a fierce enjoyment in existence that he admired.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

The sun was coming up. Miko groaned. Morning wasn’t her best time. Jazz and Prime were standing at the entrance to the cave, watching the dawn. Something about Prime’s stance made her get up and join them.

“That don’t look right,” Jazz said quietly.

“No,” Prime agreed. “It does not.”

For a moment, Miko couldn’t tell what they were talking about. Sun coming up over ocean; that was normal. She’d visited the California coast on her way to Jasper and watched sun _set_ over the Pacific - _that_ was weird. She looked up at Jazz, whose head was easier to see from the ground, and followed his line of sight. Crimson light bloomed along the horizon, coloring the ocean mists violet. Nothing was flying out there, ship or dino-bird thing; just vivid clouds and lightening sky and the partly-shrouded orb of the sun.

The sun?

Okaaay. Three moons and the lightness of her steps had convinced her they weren’t on Earth, in any time period. She’d known that already. Alien planet, fine. But something about seeing this bloated, ruddy fireball – several times larger than Earth’s sun, or several times closer, far too large to mistake or blame on funny atmospheric effects – made her want to sit down, not trusting her knees. She leaned against Prime’s leg instead. 

“Kinda thought the radiation spectrum was a little hard for an organic planet,” Jazz said quietly. 

“And me without my sunblock,” Miko said. “SPF 5000…”

“We cannot remain here,” Optimus agreed. “We must find the ship, or some other means of leaving this system. Until then, Miko, it would be best if you remained inside the cave.” 

Beneath their feet, the mountain rumbled and heaved. 

“Uh oh,” Miko said, keeping her balance. So far this was only a little worse than the little shakers back home. She looked up to the crater rim, though, to see steam and ash billowing into the morning sky. That wasn’t good, but as long as the lava wasn’t _purple_ it couldn’t be too catastrophic, right? She wondered if Optimus was thinking the same thing.

“Need to get outta here,” Jazz said. “Land or sea?”

“Distance matters more,” Optimus said, scooping Miko onto his shoulder. “And without roads we will be fastest on the beach.” The wind was blowing somewhat from the north; northward Optimus ran, Jazz right behind, angling for a high ridge of the mountain, a long arm sloping down to the beach. On such higher ground they would be safer from lava issuing from the crater itself, or lahars coming down the mountainsides. 

More earthquakes slowed their steps, but the robots were surefooted. They were halfway down when the biggest quake made even them pause, Optimus reaching out to steady Jazz, both of them falling to one knee. A few yards below them, the ridge was suddenly split, the rock and earth falling open across their path in a gaping maw a mile long. 

Down in the gorge, a glowing river of lava was rising fast. 

“No way,” Jazz growled. “No way! Not even we have luck this bad…”

The bloated sun had risen higher, radiation searing down. Lightning-ridden ash clouds boiled from behind them, cutting off any retreat that way. Jazz curled around Miko, shielding her from as much of the radiation as he could, trying not to touch her with hot metal. Optimus curled around Jazz, shielding them both. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Miko saw that Jazz’s and Prime’s hands were held fast, their fingers intertwined. She wished she could reach them, wished she had someone whose hand would fit in hers, because she could feel her skin dissolving, down to muscle and bone…

…and the world dissolved. 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

And reassembled.

Optimus stood, blinking thoughtfully at their surroundings. They were back at the Autobot base, being stared at by Ratchet, Arcee, Bee, Bulkhead and Smokescreen, and by not just Jack and Raf, but June Darby and Fowler as well. 

“What?” Jazz squawked, flopping down onto his aft in relief. 

“WOOHOOO!” Miko shouted, running a victory lap around Jazz and Optimus, her arms upraised, before cannonballing into a stunned Bulkhead. “Saved from certain death again! I knew you’d figure something out, Ratchet!”

“I…” Ratchet rubbed the back of his helm. “I didn’t do anything. The …ship reactivated itself, finally, and you three appeared.” He wasn’t about to mention that he’d been this close to pulling the whole vessel apart. Until he’d realized its true origin. “I know what happened, though.” Six pairs of robot and five pairs of human eyes leveled on the medic. He crossed his arms and glared impartially at everyone for a moment. (And Prime had better not think for a nanosecond that he hadn’t noticed his mangled arm!)

“Jazz,” Ratchet said, leaning close, enjoying the suspense. “This isn’t a Vellere ship. It’s Sien!”

Jazz’s visor flared. “Sien? Sien! Oh. Wait, that means…” Bulkhead, Arcee and Bee were already falling over each other laughing, and after squeezing his optics shut for a moment, Jazz joined them. 

“That explains it,” Prime said, nodding. He turned to the humans up on the catwalk. “The Sien are a very advanced race, and they are famed for the elaborateness of their entertainments. The craft Jazz took was not meant to be a starship at all; it is meant to be a game of some kind. A ‘ride’, if you will. Elements of which, I believe, were taken from our own memories.” The Metallivores Jazz had recently run into. The movies Miko had been watching with Jack and Raf. The volcano…that still disturbed Optimus’ thoughts, even though that danger had been summarily put to rest.

“Wait, you mean like some kind of super fancy VR roller coaster?” Raf bounced in his toes, about two seconds from dashing down the stairs to fling himself into the cockpit. Jack put a hand on his shoulder.

“No way was that ‘virtual’!” Miko said, rubbing her arms. Bulkhead cupped a hand gently around her. 

Ratchet looked at her with unwonted sympathy. “No, Miko, that wasn’t a computer simulation. The Sien are _very_ advanced. You, Jazz and Prime were literally transported to a different world, maybe a different universe.”

“Wow,” Jack, Raf and Smokescreen said, all together.

“And I am turning this ride off _right now_ ,” Ratchet said, setting deeds to words. Something clicked inside the little ship, followed by a warbling series of sounds – some kind of message, which made Ratchet snort and huff in annoyance – and the ship…ride went dark and silent.


End file.
